fine-tuning nanotech to target cancer (mit technology review)

nanotechnology has shown a lot of promise in treating cancer. repeated trials have shown positive results - patients saw their tumors decrease by nearly 60% and their metastases shrink or even disappear after small two-hour doses of cancer medicine delivered by nanoparticles.

this was how it worked: a nanoparticle containing the cancer medicine would target tumor/sick cells, bypassing the healthy ones. scientists attached molecules to the nanoparticle that would help it do this.

the challenges: the nanotech sometimes affected the drug it contained. for example, the nanoparticle could change the characteristics of the drug (dissolvability, speed, etc.) some drugs have to be absorbed more quickly than others and the nanoparticle could interfere with this.

way drug nonparticles are made:

1. drug placed inside of nanoparticle
2.nanoparticle "stitched" together by molecules that can help target the nanoparticle to sick cells.

making and standardizing nanoparticles can be difficult, so bind used the self-assemby method to create its nanoparticles. this way, some of the parts of the nanoparticle can make themselves.

this is how this is done:

1. two types of polymer are combined to form the nanoparticle.

2. one of these polymers have two physically distinct areas: one consisting of the water-insoluble skin of the drug and the other of an appendage that helps the nanoparticle to avoid the immune system.

3. the other polymer consists of three regions that are similar to the other polymer except in that it also has the molecule that can help the nanoparticle zone in on the right cells.

4. by building the nanoparticle from the ground up using distinct polymers, scientists can produce a larger number of uniform nanoparticles in a shorter amount of time.

with this method, the scientists can try experimenting with a wider range of drugs that were previously dismissed as being too dangerous for the human body, bringing us one step closer to finding cures for cancer.



bibliography

"Fine-tuning Nanotech to Target Cancer | MIT Technology Review." MIT Technology Review. N.p., 03 May 2012. Web. 27 Sept. 2015.

there's plenty of room at the bottom, simplified

in his 1959 speech at caltech, richard feynman described his and other scientists' visions for the future of nanotechnology. he believed that nanotechnology had far-reaching implications in fields as varied as medicine, manufacturing, and information technology, and claimed that the world would be able to see these implications come to life in the next few decades. 

this lecture went largely ignored at first but it experienced a revival in the 1990's when the world saw the rise of world wide web and the personal computer. as he predicted, digital products became increasingly smaller and uniform and nanoparticles came to save many lives.

to better explain his lecture, i'll divide it into 11 concise parts (i divided it up more to help myself understand it better.) 

_write small

feynman believed that we'd be able to copy millions of volumes of information onto a tiny (the size of the head of a pin) piece of surface using light and electrons. he argued that there was more than enough room to store information using nanotechnology, and that miniaturizing information would make it easier to copy it many times over. 

_information on a small scale

then he proposed that we'd be able to present content (pictures, etc.) in codes of dots and dashes rather than in their present form. each piece of content would represent "bits" of information. he uses our own bodies as an analogy - even we are made up of "bits" of information, in the form of DNA. 

_more powerful electron microscopes

to advance the fields of biology and chemistry, physicists must create more powerful electron microscopes.  

_creating artificial 'biological' systems

scientists can take inspiration from existing biological systems when creating nanotechnology: our cells are very tiny, "active," and can "manufacture various substances." they can move around and store information. 

nanoparticles carrying drugs attaching themselves to targeted cells. used for cancer treatments today.

_miniaturizing the computer

when feynman gave his talk computers were huge and too primitive to even recognize faces. they were also slow because it took time for information to get from one place in the computer to another. so, logically, for computers to be faster and smarter they had to be smaller while containing tons more information. he likened an advanced computer to the human brain, which was compact and yet sophisticated (because of its tiny, active parts.) 

1960s -NCSU

_small but movable machines 

machines that'd be able to work on a very small scale. If we make things with these small machines, they would have to be redesigned.  

_no need to lubricate tiny mechanisms

tiny mechanisms won't need lubrication because "heat escaped away from small devices very rapidly." this created the possibility of "completely automatic factories" within devices.  

_"swallowing" the surgeon

alfred hibbs suggested that we could put "mechanical surgeons" inside blood vessels so that they could look inside the human body. these little surgeons could then detect problems and then "slice them out." other mechanisms would be able to stay permanently in the body to assist faulty organs, etc. 

a muscle cell resting on a bed of nanobots  - CNN

_hundreds of "slave hands" working at the same time on a small scale with no greater cost to manufacture them

we'd be able to scale down machines so small we would be able to make many of them at once, increasing our productivity in manufacturing without raising its costs. however, feynman admits there may be some side effects to this because "all things [don't] simply scale down in proportion." 

_rearranging atoms

scientists weren't able to manipulate atomic arrangements thus far, but with nanotechnology they'd be able to. when they finally learn to do this, there would be a much wider range of possibilities for what we'd be able to do in the future.  

_announcing a competition for high school students 

at the end of his lecture, he encouraged high school students to participate in this new field by taking information on a page of a book and putting it on an area 1/2,500 smaller in linear scale or making an  electric motor the size of a 1/64 inch cube.  

bibliography

"Feynman's Talk." Feynman's Talk. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2015.  

"Nanotechnology in Medicine - Nanomedicine." Nanotechnology in Medicine. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2015.  

"Will Nanotech Soon Allow You to 'swallow the Doctor'? - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2015. 

Nanotechnology & Design
Fall 2015

Instructor: Rita Blaik